


Nonetheless

by headfirstfrhalos



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Magical Tattoos, Reincarnation, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Second Chances, Supernatural Beings, Undecided Relationship(s), i stagnated and that's why i stopped and decided to write it again, if not just ignore this, pls note that this is a rewrite, so if you've read this before keep that in mind, so there might be some new information added/old stuff removed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4278234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headfirstfrhalos/pseuds/headfirstfrhalos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the lingering moments before you die your body releases DMT. The same drug that makes you dream. The same drug found in every living animal. It's not an evolutionary trick to make you survive. Your body is choosing to release this drug now because it believes your fate is too grim for you to comprehend. So you dream. You dream that everything will be fine. You dream that nothing happened. Your body does this because it loves you. You have never met anyone like your body. Your body has been with you everyday, good and bad. It's even kept a journal of your life carved in scars. Your eyelashes always wiped the tears from your eyes."</p><p> - Unknown</p><p>Tyler never really wanted to die. He just wanted to start living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Talk With God

**Author's Note:**

> i've always struggled with the morality of god and how much of the bible/what the church tells you is true. i wrote this story because i always wondered why they (god) punished suicidal people and why they sent people to hell. and why heaven/eternal happiness is such a good thing. i don't fucking know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've always struggled with the morality of god and how much of the bible/what the church tells you is true. i wrote this story because i always wondered why they (god) punished suicidal people and why they sent people to hell. and why heaven/eternal happiness is such a good thing. i don't fucking know.

His bones hurt. That was the first thing he felt, that his knees were weak like chalk and the joints in his fingers were loose and tingling. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing around him but that aching and an unsettling awareness of his own heartbeat. Unsettled. That was the only thing his death-addled brain could discern at the moment. Slowly, he could feel his body begin to retake control of itself, his vision returning, his lungs filling, the ringing fading from his ears.

He saw that he was in a lobby. It was enormous, and it reminded him of the ocean, made of flashing blue glass and echoing ambiance, like the whole thing was built of diamonds clacking together. Chandeliers glowing a furious blue-white hovered with no chains, the tiles reflecting every bit of light and motion in the building and Tyler was absolutely dazzled. He ripped his eyes away from the ceiling, spots dancing in his eyes, and looked behind him. Hundreds, no,  _thousands_  of people were behind him, waiting patiently in line, a blank look in their eyes. Disturbed, he looked ahead, where dozens of desks were set up, manned by strange glowing blobs of light, the same color as everything else in the lobby, appearing to be immaterial but somehow shuffling manila folders and filling out forms and holding glass fountain pens. Some people, who didn't fit the crystalline scheme of the building, sat across from these light-creatures, some old, some young, many dripping golden ichor out of gaping wounds onto their chairs and the floor as they sat with the creatures. Was that what blood looked like here?

"Next!" a voice called.

He felt himself pulled towards an empty desk, where a light-creature took one moment to look at him before sighing. 

"Kids these days..." it said as it shuffled papers about its desk.

"Excuse me?" Tyler asked, surprised that either of them could speak.

"Don't understand why they keep killin' themselves," it muttered.

"Wait, what?" Tyler asked, but the light-creature ignored him.

The thing started flipping through a huge three-ring binder, passing millions of names until it fell onto 'Tyler, Robert Joseph, 1988-?'. It looked up at him and pointed an indistinct, glowing appendage at a door to his right.

"Not totally gone yet, are you? Take this card and wait there. You'll be given your options."

A blue, translucent card appeared in Tyler's left hand. 

"Next!" the creature called, and Tyler drifted away to be replaced by a tall, dark woman bleeding gold all over the tile. 

The door, like the people, wasn't colored like the rest of the building, black with iridescent colors shifting across its surface like an oil spill. It had no handle. He waited there, staring at the door because everything else hurt his eyes.

He didn't really know what to think. There is nothing but obedience in the face of absolute absurdity. He didn't expect the afterlife (or whatever this was) to have lines or offices or overworked blob angels. He also expected to be a bit more upset about dying, if he really was dead, but everything felt muffled, like someone had wrapped him in thick, soft cloth. At least he's not being tortured. Yet. 

He sighed through his nose, liquid gold dribbling from his nostrils as he did so. He thought he'd escape from these stupid worries once he was dead. 

A whirring noise distracted him. Out from the wall appeared a card machine. 'Swipe Here' the small screen read. Tyler mindlessly slid the card through the groove, watching the machine beep, flash a green light, and retract into the wall. The card evaporated from his hands, and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss.

The room was much smaller than the last and far less grand, consisting only of a single wooden chair and a judge's podium facing it. This place was much easier on the eyes with its mahogany furniture and cream-colored carpet. It looked entirely ordinary, like any upscale office you'd see in any metropolis, save for the two doors in the wall across the entrance, one glistening an opalescent white, the other completely dark and humming evilly. The quietly tasteful design of the room couldn't hide its severe purpose. This was where they were going to decide where he would spend eternity.

The person had appeared while Tyler was busy gaping at the room, clearing their throat when Tyler didn't notice them in time. He jumped, twirling his head to look.

"Have a seat," the person said calmly, settling onto their seat at the podium. 

Tyler obliged. The person, like the strange light-creatures, didn't seem to have any gender nor a memorable face, features constantly shifting from one shape to the next, as dizzying and infinite as the lobby. The only thing that stayed the same about this face was the loving, but dejected look in their eyes. 

"So," they said, steepling their fingers and looking down at him, "life was miserable, wasn't it?"

Tyler sat silently, as his life replayed double-time in his mind's eye. He cautiously nodded his head. He didn't know what this person wanted to hear.

They leaned back when they saw him nod, sighing heavily like the light-creature.

"I see. What made it that way, son?"

Son? It took Tyler a foolish moment to realize it. This was God. God Almighty. The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. God the Creator, the one he went to church every Sunday for. Panic tackled him and squeezed his heart. He'd done so much evil in his short lifetime, he knew He (if He really was a He) saw it all, and that was embarrassing and terrifying at the same time. 

"There's no need to worry, Tyler. Your sins are absolved. They taught you that in church, right? Accept God, go to Heaven, yadda yadda. But right now, I want you to focus on why you don't want to live the life I gave you."

Tyler paused. He could still feel his (dead) heart pumping madly.

"I-" he swallowed, "I wasn't happy."

"Were you?"

"I mean, I guess was happy as a kid, and sometimes I was when I got older, but that hardly counts."

"Why not?"

Tyler felt the words and feelings bubbling up in his throat. 

"It just. It just hurt to live after a while. I was so alone. No one- no, everyone heard me when I said something was wrong but they didn't  _listen._  I'm sure they cared about me but that's just not enough. They never- they never stopped for me unless I asked them to. They didn't want to help me on their own time. And half the time I didn't know why I was so miserable, but I just was and nothing could stop it. Not even praying."

He looks up into God's eyes again, indignant. 

"Why didn't you answer me?"

"I always answer, son. You just didn't listen."

Tyler's jaw clenched. He didn't know why he was suddenly so angry over something so small, he was so insignificant. But it's not like he could lie to God. Years of frustration were banging at the gates of his mouth. He let it out.

"I wasn't listening hard enough!? So this is my fault. Okay. It's my fault I became fucked in the head, it's my fault I cried every night because I didn't want to be alive, it's my fault I fucking killed myself because being born into sin was clearly  _my. Own._ _Decision._ "

He sat back with a huff, crossing his arms and tossing his head back, feeling the suddenly-delicate bones in his neck snap and spray ichor all over the steam-cleaned carpet. He was fucked. He somehow just broke his own neck. He somehow just gone off on a tirade at God, the most powerful being in all of existence. If he wasn't going to Hell for killing himself, he was going for sacrilege. 

God looked taken aback, which was weird, since God was supposed to know everything. They closed their eyes, rubbing Their ever-shifting face with both hands and sighing. Tyler pushed his head back into place to watch him, confounded as God laid Their head on the podium, arms folded, looking absolutely defeated. No hellfire? No lightning bolts? But there was nothing but heavy silence.

"I must have made a miscalculation," God finally said, head still down.

"But you're God!" he protested.

God sighed again and lifted Their head to look at Tyler.

"I made humans in my own image, Tyler. People make mistakes. People are me. Transitive relation," God said, sounding tired.

Tyler was reeling. God wasn't supposed to make mistakes. God wasn't supposed to be forgiving to slights against Them. God wasn't even supposed to be a They, for crying out loud. 

The two of them sat quietly for a moment, one fuming and the other pensive. God was the first to break the silence.

"Yes, I've made a mistake. I kept happiness too far from you. I thought you were strong enough to handle all this. I'm so sorry. It was supposed to make you beautiful."

It took a pair of disembodied hands wiping his cheeks for him to realize that he was crying. Enormous, glittering tears, red like rubies, ran from his eyes and splashed onto the floor, some running into the exposed bone of his neck and sliding down his throat, choking him. The stains on the carpet were turning black.

"I-" he coughed. It was hard to breathe with a broken neck. 

God evaporated from Their seat and appeared in front of Tyler, filling in the empty space where the floating hands ended. 

"You know very well how I am the God of Second Chances, yes?"

Tyler nodded.

"The sinner has to ask for forgiveness, and that's usually not me."

God paused, swallowing hard.

"But today, I am the sinner. I have hurt you. So I am asking you, my child, if you can forgive Me for committing such an act against you like this. I'll understand you if you don't want to. I won't punish you for that. I want to be a better parent."

Tyler closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing and focus on Their warm hands brushing his cheeks. He couldn't stand seeing God so pitiful. He wouldn't know how he could live with himself if he didn't forgive Them. Be like Christ, his mother told him. He used to reject it, back when God was an untouchable old man in the sky who sent people like him to Hell, and he still wanted to, with that image still rooted so deeply in his mind.

But this God? They weren't anything like he expected. This God made mistakes. This God wasn't a distant father. This God wept with him when he told Them why he wanted to die. This God was human. This God he could love. He didn't know if he could trust Them, but he was desperate.

"Okay," he whispered, eyes fluttering open.

God smiled, eyes shining bright as They gently wrapped an arm around him.

"Tyler," God started.

"Yes?"

"Would you like to go back to earth and try again?"

He stiffened.

"You can simply go to Heaven if you like, child," They backtracked.

Tyler thought for a while.

"Is that allowed?" he asked softly. "I thought people who killed themselves went to Hell."

"Is that what they're saying now?" God said. "Well, it's just not true. People like you- they're given the option to go back. Most of them pick Heaven."

He swallowed.

"Will it- will life be like the last time?"

"I can't change your circumstances, child. I cannot change peoples' attitudes and actions. That is theirs to decide. But I can give you My blessing, and I can give you a purpose until you can find your own."

"What purpose?"

"I can't tell you everything, otherwise you'll figure it out right away and it wouldn't mean anything anymore. I'm giving you a puzzle. I hope you'll forgive me for putting more on your plate."

Tyler felt something lift off his chest. He _could_  have a purpose. He _did_ have someone who loved him. He had a second chance. Maybe he could...

"I'll go," Tyler said resolutely.

At that, a third door appeared next to the original two. It was a light brown, matte and smooth, glowing like brown eyes in a sunset and pungent like ripe squash and mulch in the summertime heat.

"Earth," God said, a little wistful.

"Will I be able to remember this?" he asked as he stood from his chair, drifting towards the door.

"Just snatches, only in dreams that you'll soon forget upon waking," God said, smoothing out Their hair. "Life is a gift, Tyler. One that you should cherish and honor. Because the only alternative is death."

Those were the last words he heard before everything became static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god's a bag of dicks. but at least they try. 
> 
> don't kill yourself kids. as far as i can tell, this version of god isn't real and you're not getting any second chances.


	2. Heaven is for Real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler wakes up in the hospital, his mother crying like he was already dead.

A voice and touch he recognized as his mother's brought him awareness of the light past his eyelids, waking him up. Tyler was on a hospital bed, sitting up and tucked beneath sterile white sheets wearing a polka-dotted gown. His arms were cluttered with IVs, a heart monitor clipped onto his left thumb, feeding information to a screen on his left. He felt dry, like a sandstorm had come and sucked all the water out of his mouth and eyes, and his throat felt like splintered wood when he swallowed. Pain dully throbbed through his wrists and head.

She was sitting next to him on the worn visitor's armchair, stroking his hand and weeping softly, making tiny sounds like a bird as she cried. Tyler tried to speak, but all he could manage was a dry wheeze. She heard anyways, and looked up from where she was laying her head on his bed, hooded eyes ringed with red. Her face reminded him of the ones he saw in his fevered dreams, far more weary and forsaken more than anyone should be.

"Tyler?" she asked.

"Mom," he croaked.

She didn't reply, only stared at him like he had come back from the dead. She reached up, the backs of her fingers rolling down his pale, smooth cheeks, and she did that again and again like his face was the only thing in the world. Her lips twitched oddly, like she wanted to smile and scream and sob all at the same time, her forehead crinkling and eyebrows furrowing together.

"Mom?" he asked again when he saw fresh tears fill her eyes.

He was quiet as she pulled her hand away to wipe her eyes with a tissue from the packet on the bedside table, blotting each one carefully as if she didn't want to smear any nonexistent makeup. She sniffed hard, crumpling the tissue, then looked back up at him again.

"What happened?" he asked, though he very well knew what he had done.

She took a deep breath to steady herself.

"You- you took rat poison. And then you..."

She gestured at her wrists, and he looked at his. Twin stitches nearly enclosed the entire circumference of his brittle wrists, the skin around the thread a soft seashell pink. He ran a thumb over one, feeling it ache and tingle when he pressed down.

"They pumped your stomach and they had to give you blood. The doctors said your heart stopped several times and I..." she trailed off again, dabbling at her eyes and choking on a sob. "I thought I lost you," she finally whispered.

Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes at those words. He swallowed, turning away from his mother to stare at the hallway across the room, trying to ignore the sounds of his mother's crying. It didn't work, and his vision blurred as she squeezed his hand, and he could feel warm droplets sliding down his face.

"'M sorry, mom." That was all he could say.

✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝

The nurse came over to check on him after his mother left. She was young and short and skinny and at least eight months pregnant, her gaunt body a terrifying contrast to the swell in her stomach.

She was swift and efficient as she checked his wrists and pulled out the needle that piped in new blood from a now-empty bag, making no attempt at conversation. Tyler watched her silently, not wanting to bother her because she, like everyone else he's seen today, looked completely exhausted. It was eleven at night and she had probably been working since sunrise, and he felt a stab of pity. He thought she was about to leave when she paused, giving him a warm smile and gently squeezing his left shoulder.

"Don't treat yourself bad like this," she said in a thick Korean accent, "you be a very big hero one day."

Then she left, shuffling out the door, leaving Tyler confused and guilty. The spot where she touched him was still warm, tingling against the cold air. He rubbed it when it didn't go away after a minute like it normally would. He waited like that for almost an hour, trying to go to sleep, but the constant warmth was very distracting and very off-putting. He'd scratch, he'd rub, toss and turn in his bed all to no avail. He scrubbed it angrily, startled when the heat slowly began to spread across his body like it was traveling through his veins. He eyed the red "Call Nurse" button on the side of the bed, hesitating when he remembered the woman's eyes, the shadows beneath her eyes so dark they were nearly purple. The warmth intensified into an angry burn, and he practically slammed the button as he tensed up in pain. He didn't know if he was having some sort of allergic reaction or if there was still some poison in his system, but he wasn't going to risk it.

He looked at his arms. They were pink, like he had been soaked in hot water. Certain spots were a darker red than the rest, and he watched with wide eyes as dark brown blotches, the color of birthmarks, surfaced on his skin, ringed with an irritated-looking red like a strange tattoo. The burning localized to those colored spots, his arms, his shoulders, his chest. He touched the one in nestled the crook of his elbow, and a feeling like an electric shock coursed through his fingers. Finally, the nurse rushed in as fast as she could, concern crinkling her brow.

"What's wrong?"

"I- my skin started burning, and these marks appeared all over me. See?"

He held out his arms to her. She stared at them for a moment, and then looked at him like he was insane.

"Nothing is there."

"What!?"

"Your arms are fine."

Confused, he looked at himself. The brown patches were there.

"Can't you see them?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"What the fuck.." he whispered to himself.

"Might just be a dream. Do you want me to call doctor?"

"No, I'm- I'm fine."

She nodded slowly, suspiciously, before walking back out and sighing with exhaustion as soon as she left the room, and Tyler felt bad again as he watched her rub her growing stomach and eye the clock in the hallway. He looked back at his burns (?) and wondered how and why she couldn't see them. He could see them and feel them, that generally meant that it was real, right? He was pretty sure he wasn't on any drugs that would make him see things. The doctor that had talked to him and his mother earlier that evening had explained what they had done with Tyler, and though there was a lot of work done on him, there was no mention of anything that he knew would cause hallucinations.

He sighed, similar to the one the nurse did as she left, and sat back on his bed, definitely not going to sleep after something like this. He touched his wrists, something he couldn't stop doing all day, feeling his left buzz as he stroked the brown blur that overlapped the stitches. The way the touch made him shudder unpleasantly kept him grounded, aware of what he had done and what he was so close to doing. He figured that was a good thing.

But he honestly felt like shit. Not because he tried, but because he failed. If he was dead, he wouldn't have had to face his mother's crying, look at all the texts and hear all the voicemails from family members too far away to come over and cry all over him, deal with the counselors and the pastors and the questions he knew he would be asked if they saw the lines on his wrists. All the people who had tried to kill themselves and survived always said they regretted it because they realized how precious life was, but Tyler honestly wasn't feeling it, even after a really weird dream about meeting God and bleeding gold and crying rubies and Him (Them?) asking for forgiveness, which was completely preposterous and too good to be true. Maybe those people were just bluffing to make everyone feel better about themselves. He didn't blame them. He didn't really want to tell people that he was still depressed after all this. He'd look ungrateful.

It was one in the morning. Tyler was cold, bored, and alone. It's not like he wanted anyone around when he was feeling bad, but he honestly did. Loneliness made everything worse, and the sterile environment provided no distractions. Maybe he should to sleep now. They'd wake him up early to eat and move out of the ICU to Saint Dymphna's Hospital of Recovery, which sounded terrifying and pretentious and full of ignorant fledgling psychologists with saccharine voices, all fresh out of college and having no idea how to actually deal with mentally ill people. He knew the type. He shut his eyes and pulled the unsatisfactorily thin blanket over his eyes to shield them from the hard, fluorescent lighting that they didn't dim at night.

His mind rambled on as he tried to rest, thinking about the credibility of his own mind after the marks on his skin and his dream. He hated being crazy, if this was what it was like. His chest started hurting like it always did when he was like this. It was hard to breathe, and he pulled the sheet off to try and get some air, but some invisible weight on the inside kept him from taking a meaningful breath.

_God, why am I like this? Why do I have to keep feeling like this? I had a dream about You but I don't know if it's real and it's honestly too good to be true. I mean, I wish You were like that. I feel like You'd be a much better god if you were, but I guess no one's perfect. But You are? That's kind of Your thing? So is that dream version of You real? You told me there that You did it because You wanted to make me stronger, so I could be a better person, but You overdid it and I ended up dying- or almost dying- because of Your mistake and You apologized and put me back. I don't know. I felt like You really loved me there. Now that I'm back I just feel the same just like before. I mean, I know that was just a dream, but couldn't I at least feel happy that I'm alive? I'm sorry._

Great prayer. He was ready to blather on when the weird burning started up again, this time only on his inner right arm. Groaning in frustration, he looked at it and saw parts of the brown blotch turn black, smeared colors fading and the black parts becoming sharper, like someone wiping frost off a mirror and suddenly being able to see themselves. He hissed in pain as the heat grew unbearable, but fortunately, it was over as quickly as it had started. The Roman numerals "XLIII:XVI:XXXIII" were emblazoned onto his skin.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered as he touched it, relieved when it didn't hurt. It smoked a little though, and the smell reminded him of an extinguished candle.

He ignored the oddness of the situation to ponder just what the numbers even meant. 43:16:33. Was that a time? A place? Or, if this was supernaturally obtained, which it probably was judging by how bizarre this past hour has been for him, a bible verse?

He looked at the little bedside table to his right. Usually they had a bible inside, right?

He pulled open the little drawer and spotted a well-worn, black, leather-bound bible. Perfect. He guessed the first number denoted the book, the second the chapter, and the third the verse. Book forty-three was... John?

John 16:33 it was.

 

_"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”_

 

The book fell from his hands. What the _fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> step one: be honest when it's not enough
> 
> warafin is one of the active ingredients in rat poison. it thins the blood, so for tyler to ingest this and then cut himself would mean his blood would not clot like it normally would, and he would have bled out is his bathtub if not for his mother calling the ambulance in time when he texted her his suicide note.
> 
> the nurse in this story is is inspired by my own mother, who worked 12 hour shifts a day while she was pregnant and nearly miscarried because she worked so hard to make ends meet. moms are important.
> 
> tyler's experience with god is reminiscent of testimonies of people who died for various reasons and claimed they went to heaven or hell. The title of this chapter, in fact, is named after the testimony of a little boy who died and saw heaven, though it turns out he actually saw nothing at all and his parents convinced him to lie to get media attention. my mom always made me watch those videos, but i've always doubted their validity, especially after that family's confession. in this story, however, it happened for a fact and this story is basically just an idealized world of spirits.
> 
> a lot of people have commented saying that they liked the way i portrayed God and they could relate to tyler's religious struggles. i'm glad i could reach you all like this, it means a lot to know that we're not as alone as we think, something our tyler here has yet to learn.


End file.
